AFIO Weekly Intelligence Notes #25-09 dated 14 July 2009

Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Security Flaws Found at Federal Buildings. Investigators from the Government Accountability Office over the past year successfully smuggled bomb-making materials into 10 high-security federal buildings, constructed bombs and walked around undetected, according to GAO testimony.

The investigation uncovered critical weaknesses in protection provided to workers by the Federal Protective Service, the agency in charge of safeguarding federal buildings.

More than 1 million government employees work in 9,000 facilities nationwide that are guarded by the FPS, including at least 350,000 Washington area workers. The revelation comes as the administration prepares to reorganize the agency.

The GAO said security concerns prevent it from revealing the exact locations of the facilities. They included offices of lawmakers as well as offices for the Homeland Security, Justice and State departments.

In the past, security experts have criticized some GAO investigators for publicizing sensational findings that are not based on intelligence-driven risk assessments, but the GAO stressed that it followed generally accepted government standards. [OKeefe/WashingtonPost/7July2009] 

Russia Launches Three New Military Spy Satellites. Russian Space Forces launched three new military satellites aboard the Rokot launch vehicle. They'll join a network of an estimated 60 to 70 spy satellites.

The liftoff from the Plesetsk space center in northwest Russia is the second Rokot launch this year. In March, a Rokot carried the European Space Agency (ESA) GOCE gravity-research mission into orbit.

Military analysts say that the new Cosmos-class craft most likely will join the chain of early-warning missile detection sentinel satellites. The Russian Federal Space Agency gave no mission details other than to identify the Rokot as a three-stage demilitarized RS-18 rocket.

It's not known if Russia is beefing up its early warning systems as a reaction to recent North Korean missile launches. [Examiner.com/6July2009] 

French Woman Detained on Spy Charges in Iran. A French woman was detained in Iran on spying charges, according to France's foreign ministry, which demanded her release.

"France firmly condemns the July 1 arrest and detention by Iran of a French academic," the ministry said in a statement, without revealing the name of the woman or the university she was linked to.

"The spying charges put forward by the Iranian authorities do not pass the test," the statement added.

The woman had been in Iran for five months when she was arrested at the airport as she was about to leave the country, it said.

"We call on the Iranian authorities to immediately release our compatriot and authorise her to leave Iran toward France," the ministry said.

"France has informed its European partners about his subject and appeals for the solidarity of all Europeans."

The announcement came as the 27-nation European Union mulls a response to Iran's arrest of local British embassy staff members in Tehran.

All but one of the nine local employees have been released. Iran has accused them of instigating riots over the contested re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. [AP/6July2009] 

Democrats, Administration Seek Compromise on Intelligence Briefings. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that Democrats were negotiating a compromise with the Obama administration over procedures for how to keep Congress briefed on intelligence matters, trying to deflate tensions in the increasingly heated showdown between some lawmakers and the CIA.

Pelosi said House intelligence chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) and administration officials were discussing legislation that would forbid the White House and intelligence agencies from limiting sensitive classified information to just eight leading members of Congress, unless the leaders of the intelligence oversight committees agreed with the decision.

The House was expected to consider the legislation today, but late today it appeared that lawmakers might put it off until tomorrow or early next week.

The language opening up the CIA briefing process has been included in the annual intelligence authorization bills for several years, meeting opposition from both the Bush and Obama White Houses. Late yesterday, the White House threatened to veto the intelligence legislation if it contains the language opening up the briefings, suggesting the provision would usurp the executive branch's powers.

The push to forbid the administration from limiting who receives the most sensitive briefings gained steam in May when Pelosi admitted she had known about the use of harsh interrogation techniques since at least February 2003 but did not speak out against their use because she was forbidden from discussing the matter with anyone beyond those eight leaders on both sides of the Capitol.

At least seven Democrats on the intelligence committee accused the agency of deliberately misleading or outright lying to Congress over the past eight years. Those accusations, revealed in letters this week, were based on a closed-door briefing that CIA Director Leon Panetta gave to the panel on June 24.

"Top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all members of Congress, and misled members for a number of years from 2001 to this week. This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods," Democratic members of the committee wrote to Panetta on June 26, summarizing his presentation.

In a similar letter Tuesday to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.), the committee's ranking Republican, and Pelosi and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), Reyes wrote that in one instance the agency "affirmatively lied" to the House and Senate intelligence committees in its notifications of classified material.

The lawmakers said they could not reveal the substance of the CIA's misleading actions because the issue was deemed top secret.

The CIA's spokesman, George Little, rejected the suggestion that the agency lied to the committees, adding that Panetta deserved credit for bringing past mistakes to the committee's attention. "This agency and this director believe it is vital to keep the Congress fully and currently informed. Director Panetta's actions back that up. As the letter from these six representatives notes, it was the CIA itself that took the initiative to notify the oversight committees," Little said.

Republicans accused Democrats of floating the information as a way to distract from the debate on the intelligence authorization bill, which they had hoped to use as a way to rehash Pelosi's accusation that the CIA lied to her during a September 2002 briefing. On May 14 Pelosi said the agency intentionally misled her in a 2002 briefing on interrogation techniques used against alleged terrorist detainees.

Pelosi said she was never told about the use of waterboarding at that 2002 briefing, even though government records later revealed the detainee had been subjected to waterboarding and other enhanced techniques just weeks before her briefing. CIA documents released two months ago included notations indicating that Pelosi was informed at the 2002 briefing about waterboarding, which simulates drowning during interrogations. Republicans have suggested Pelosi has not told the truth about her knowledge and support of the enhanced interrogation technique, an allegation they plan to repeat in today's debate on the intelligence legislation.

Pelosi said she has spoken only twice to Panetta in the last seven months, once when he was first nominated for the position and another time many months ago for a briefing. Instead, she said she receives her regular intelligence briefing from Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence.

A new effort to ease tensions between House Democrats and the CIA began late last night, when Reyes issued a statement crediting Panetta with coming forward to tell the lawmakers about the previous misleading briefings.

And Pelosi said an accord will be reached on the briefing dispute. Rather than pull the legislation off the floor, Pelosi said the House would likely pass the intelligence authorization bill with the language allowing the intelligence committee chairmen to open sensitive briefings to the entire committees. Then, Reyes and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the Senate intelligence committee chairwoman, could reach an agreement "on something that will allow congressmen the opportunity to honor their oversight responsibilities." [Kane/WashingtonPost/9July2009] 

U.S. Wiretapping of Limited Value, Officials Report. While the Bush administration had defended its program of wiretapping without warrants as a vital tool that saved lives, a new government review released Friday said the program's effectiveness in fighting terrorism was unclear.

The report, mandated by Congress last year and produced by the inspectors general of five federal agencies, found that other intelligence tools used in assessing security threats posed by terrorists provided more timely and detailed information.

Most intelligence officials interviewed "had difficulty citing specific instances" when the National Security Agency's wiretapping program contributed to successes against terrorists, the report said.

While the program obtained information that "had value in some counterterrorism investigations, it generally played a limited role in the F.B.I.'s overall counterterrorism efforts," the report concluded. The Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence branches also viewed the program, which allowed eavesdropping without warrants on the international communications of Americans, as a useful tool but could not link it directly to counterterrorism successes, presumably arrests or thwarted plots.

The report also hinted at political pressure in preparing the so-called threat assessments that helped form the legal basis for continuing the classified program, whose disclosure in 2005 provoked fierce debate about its legality. The initial authorization of the wiretapping program came after a senior C.I.A. official took a threat evaluation, prepared by analysts who knew nothing of the program, and inserted a paragraph provided by a senior White House official that spoke of the prospect of future attacks against the United States.

These threat assessments, which provided the justification for President George W. Bush's reauthorization of the wiretapping program every 45 days, became known among intelligence officials as the "scary memos," the report said. Intelligence analysts involved in the process eventually realized that "if a threat assessment identified a threat against the United States," the wiretapping and related surveillance programs were "likely to be renewed," the report added.

The report found that the secrecy surrounding the program may have limited its effectiveness. At the C.I.A., it said, so few working-level officers were allowed to know about the program that the agency often did not make full use of the leads the wiretapping generated, and intelligence leads that came from the wiretapping operation were often "vague or without context," the report said.

The findings raise questions about assertions from Mr. Bush and his most senior advisers that the warrantless wiretapping program was essential in stopping terrorist attacks. In January 2006, for example, Mr. Bush said the surveillance program "helped prevent attacks and save American lives." Former Vice President Dick Cheney has made the same point, most recently in his public defense of the administration's campaign against terrorism.

The report provided previously undisclosed details about the legal and operational schisms that dogged the program in its five years of existence. The 38-page document released Friday was an unclassified version. The bulk of the findings remain classified in separate reports from each of the five inspectors general, who represent the Justice Department, the N.S.A, the C.I.A., the Defense Department and the Office of National Intelligence.

The inquiry included interviews with about 200 government and private-sector personnel, but a number of key players - including David Addington, a top aide to Mr. Cheney; George J. Tenet, the former C.I.A. director; John Ashcroft, the former attorney general; and John Yoo, a Justice Department lawyer who endorsed the wiretapping program - declined to be interviewed.

Congressional Democrats who had been critics of the program said they found the report's conclusions disturbing.

A statement from Dennis Blair, the current director of national intelligence, said he was committed to "seeing that all surveillance activities protect U.S. national security and comply with the laws of the United States."

Among other findings, the report concluded that Alberto R. Gonzales, as attorney general, provided "confusing, inaccurate" statements about N.S.A. surveillance activities to lawmakers in 2007, but did not "intend to mislead Congress." Mr. Gonzales had said that a dispute between the White House and Justice Department lawyers in 2004 did not relate to the wiretapping program but rather to "other" intelligence activities.

The report states that at the same time Mr. Bush authorized the warrantless wiretapping operation, he also signed off on other surveillance programs that the government has never publicly acknowledged. While the report does not identify them, current and former officials say that those programs included data mining of e-mail messages of Americans. That was apparently what Mr. Gonzales was referring to in his Congressional testimony.

The investigation stopped short of assessing whether the wiretapping program violated the law requiring court-ordered warrants before wiretapping Americans' communications. But the report faulted the administration for what it called a failure to conduct adequate legal review of the program at its inception.

The report said that Mr. Yoo, of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, gave the White House his first legal opinion endorsing the wiretapping in November 2001, weeks after it had begun, and that his boss, Jay Bybee, was not even aware of the program's existence.

Moreover, Mr. Ashcroft gave his legal authorization to the program for the first two and a half years based on a "misimpression" of what activities the N.S.A. was actually conducting. In March 2004, a showdown occurred in Mr. Ashcroft's hospital room when top Justice Department officials refused to sign off on the legality of the program and threatened to resign. The report said that the White House had the program continue by having Mr. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, sign the authorization.

What the report described as flawed legal opinions by Mr. Yoo and efforts to circumvent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret court that approves intelligence wiretaps, "jeopardized" the Justice Department's relations with the court, the report said. The panel also recommended that the Justice Department examine criminal cases that grew out of the program to determine if prosecutors had complied with federal judicial requirements to disclose information to defendants.

In 2008, Congress restructured the federal surveillance law, the broadest such overhaul in three decades. The inspector generals' report said the new law "gave the government even broader authority to intercept international communications" than did the original program. That same measure also gave legal immunity to the telecommunications companies that cooperated in the wiretapping program. [Lichtblau&Risen/NyTimes/11July2009]

Britain "Outsourced" Torture to Pakistan. A British opposition politician has accused the government and intelligence agencies of colluding in the torture of a British terrorism suspect whose interrogation was "outsourced" to Pakistan.

Speaking with parliamentary privilege, which allowed him to make allegations which might otherwise be in contempt of court, Conservative David Davis said the government had helped set up the torture and abuse of suspect Rangzieb Ahmed at the hands of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI).

The government dismissed Davis's accusations, saying he was presenting unsubstantiated allegations as fact.

Foreign Office minister Ivan Lewis said the government was clear in its opposition to torture.

"It is an abhorrent crime and we are fundamentally opposed to it," he said. "That principle guides all the government's work, including the intelligence services and the armed forces."

Ahmed, a British national, was allowed to travel to Pakistan in 2006, even though he was suspected of involvement in terrorism offences and was under surveillance by British police.

The ISI was alerted, Davis said, and its agents detained Ahmed, who was beaten and tortured, including having three of his fingernails extracted, during 13 months in custody. British agents also questioned him during that time and supplied questions to the ISI for the interrogations, Davis said. "He should have been arrested by the UK in 2006," Davis said. "He was not. The authorities knew that he intended to travel to Pakistan, so they should have prevented that. Instead, they suggested the ISI arrest him."

Ahmed was eventually returned to Britain and jailed for life last year after being found guilty of membership of al Qaeda and directing a terrorist cell. He is appealing his conviction. [Reuters/8July2009] 

US Spy Chief's New Zealand Secret Blown. The head of a United States intelligence agency has been paying what until yesterday had been a secret visit to Wellington for talks with his New Zealand counterparts.

A US Embassy spokeswoman last night confirmed that the director of the National Security Agency, Lieutenant-General Keith Alexander, was in New Zealand for consultations with Government officials.

General Alexander's presence became known after he was apparently spotted by a reporter for an internet news service who saw him entering a Wellington building accompanied by security personnel.

The NSA is responsible for collecting and analyzing foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence.

It also protects American Government communications and information systems.

The New Zealand equivalent is the Government Communications Security Bureau, which also collects and analyses foreign signals intelligence and provides security services to maintain the confidentiality of official information and data stored on public service computers.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister, who is on a four-day trip to South Pacific countries, said John Key knew General Alexander was in the country.

But the spokesman said he had nothing more to add as the Prime Minister did not comment on security matters. [Armstrong/NewZealandHerald/8July2009] 

Fourth Person Pleads Guilty to Illegally Accessing Confidential Passport Files. A fourth individual pleaded guilty today to illegally accessing numerous confidential passport application files. William A. Celey, 27, of Washington, D.C., pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson in the District of Columbia to a one-count criminal information charging him with unauthorized computer access.

According to court documents, from August 2003 through July 2004, Celey worked as a contract employee for the State Department as a file assistant. According to plea documents, Celey admitted he had access to official State Department computer databases in the regular course of his employment, including the Passport Information Electronic Records System (PIERS), which contains all imaged passport applications dating back to 1994. The imaged passport applications on PIERS contain, among other things, a photograph of the passport applicant as well as certain personal information including the applicant's full name, date and place of birth, current address, telephone numbers, parent information, spouse's name and emergency contact information. These confidential files are protected by the Privacy Act of 1974, and access by State Department employees is strictly limited to official government duties.

In pleading guilty, Celey admitted that between June 22, 2004, and July 15, 2004, he logged onto the PIERS database and viewed the passport applications of more than 75 celebrities and their families, actors, models, musicians, athletes, record producers, family members, a politician and other individuals identified in the press. Celey admitted that he had no official government reason to access and view these passport applications, but that his sole purpose in accessing and viewing these passport applications was idle curiosity.

Celey is the fourth current or former State Department employee to plead guilty in this continuing investigation. On Sept. 22, 2008, Lawrence C. Yontz, a former Foreign Service Officer and intelligence analyst, pleaded guilty to unlawfully accessing nearly 200 confidential passport files. Yontz was sentenced on Dec. 19, 2008, to 12 months of probation and ordered to perform 50 hours of community service. On Jan. 14, 2009, Dwayne F. Cross, a former administrative assistant and contract specialist, pleaded guilty to unlawfully accessing more than 150 confidential passport files. On March 23, 2009, Cross was sentenced to 12 months of probation and ordered to perform 100 hours of community service. On Jan. 27, 2009, Gerald R. Lueders, a former Foreign Service Officer, watch officer and recruitment coordinator, pleaded guilty to unlawfully accessing more than 50 confidential passport files. Lueders was sentenced on July 8, 2009, to one year of probation and ordered to pay a $5,000 fine. Celey is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 23, 2009.

These cases are being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Armando O. Bonilla of the Criminal Division's Public Integrity Section, headed by Section Chief William M. Welch II. The cases are being investigated by the State Department Office of Inspector General. [USDOJ/10July2009] 

Ethiopia Adopts Strict Anti-Terrorism Bill. Ethiopia's parliament adopted a new anti-terrorism bill despite criticism by rights groups that the legislation violates civil liberties.

The law, proposed last year after a string of bomb attacks in the capital, comprises 38 sections and paves the way for arrests and searches without court warrants.

"Whosoever writes, edits, prints, publishes, publicizes, disseminates, shows, makes to be heard any promotional statements encouraging... terrorist acts is punishable with rigorous imprisonment from 10 to 20 years," it says.

Several opposition members, while insisting they were committed to the fight against terrorism, also criticized the law for being prone to abuse by security forces.

Last week, the US-based Human Rights Watch said the law broadly defined terrorism, risked muzzling political speech and encouraging unfair trials.

The law is also meant to counter the activities of some separatist groups, who have been blamed by Addis Ababa for carrying out "terror attacks" throughout the Horn of Africa nation.

In recent months, Ethiopia's parliament has passed a series of laws tightening up on the activities of non-governmental organisations, associations and the local media, while most political opponents are in prison or living in exile.

Elections are due in June 2010, five years after disputed polls led to the death of nearly 200 people. [AP/7July2009] 

U.S. Senate Approves $42.9 Billion Homeland Security Bill. The Senate approved a wide-ranging $42.9 billion measure to pay for improving U.S. border security, clamp down on illegal immigration and beef up cyber security in fiscal 2010.

The Senate voted 84-6 for the annual spending bill funding the Department of Homeland Security for the year starting October 1, and now lawmakers must work out differences with a $42.6 billion version of the bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives last month.

Debate over the bills offered insight into deep divisions over how to address illegal immigration into the United States, beef up security on the U.S. borders, and what to do with the estimated 12 million people in the country illegally.

The Senate measure provides $10.1 billion for customs and border protection, including $800 million for bolstering security along the U.S. border with Mexico, where drug and weapons trafficking has spiked and sparked growing concerns.

The legislation also includes almost $400 million for cyber security, a 27 percent increase over fiscal 2009, and comes as several U.S. government websites were attacked in the past few days by hackers.

The Senate agreed to several amendments, including one that would block the release of photographs of abuse of detainees by U.S. personnel. The American Civil Liberties Union has sued to make the photos public.

Another amendment approved would allow individuals to import prescription drugs from Canada as long as they comply with U.S. law and they are not in the business of importing such medicine.

Senators also agreed to an amendment that would require the Obama administration to complete 700 miles of reinforced fencing along the Mexican border by the end of 2010, and bar just using virtual fencing and vehicle barriers.

The three provisions were not in the House version, so lawmakers will have to work out their differences.

The Senate also agreed to make permanent a program for verifying the immigration status of those seeking work in the United States, known as E-Verify. The system is voluntary for private employers but Department of Homeland Security plans to require federal contractors to use it starting September 8. The House extended it for two years.

The administration had wanted to extend the program for a couple of years and Democrat Charles Schumer, who heads the Senate subcommittee on immigration, has suggested a robust biometric system instead of making E-Verify permanent.

Senate Democrats hope to start work on reforming the whole immigration system later this year, but the White House, which is focused on its top priority of revamping U.S. healthcare, has cast doubt on whether that debate will begin this year. [Pelofsky/Reuters/7July2009] 

Lebanon Officer Suspected of Spying Flees to Israel. A Lebanese army colonel suspected of collaborating with Israel fled to the Jewish state last week, a Lebanese security source said.

Two other Lebanese army colonels have been detained in a probe into spying for Israel that has led to more than 50 arrests. Around 20 of those detained have been formally charged.

The wave of detentions began in April with the arrest of a former brigadier general of the General Security directorate.

Lebanon has described the arrests as a major blow to Israel's intelligence-gathering in a country where it has fought several wars in the past 31 years, most recently in 2006 against Hezbollah guerrillas.

Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria, has called for the execution of those convicted. At least one of the suspects was involved in the 2004 assassination of Hezbollah commander Ghalib Awali, security officials have said. He was killed by a bomb in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Lebanon has formally complained to the United Nations about its findings, saying the spying is a breach of a Security Council resolution that halted the 2006 conflict. There has been no official word from Israel.

In a regular report on Lebanon for the Security Council, issued on Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was concerned at the Lebanese allegations of spying.

The allegations, "if proved, could endanger the fragile cessation of hostilities that exists between Israel and Lebanon," Ban wrote. [Worsnip/WashingtonPost/7July2009] 

South Korean Web Sites Are Hobbled in New Round of Attacks. South Korea was bombarded Thursday with a third wave of cyberattacks, which disrupted and in some cases halted access to government, banking and media Web sites.

Intelligence officials in Seoul, meanwhile, presented no hard evidence to support earlier suspicions that North Korea may have been behind the disruptions that have hit Web sites in South Korea and the United States in recent days.

The timing of Thursday's attacks, which began in the early evening, had been predicted by the country's largest computer security company, Ahnlabs. It said hackers had planted "malicious codes" in thousands of personal and business computers, which contained instructions to bombard seven Web sites in South Korea at 6 p.m. local time.

When the attacks began, however, there were many more targets than predicted. About half a dozen government Web sites not on the company's list, including those of parliament, the Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, slowed down or temporarily stopped working.

South Korea's main spy agency said that the "level of the attacks was highly organized and meticulously planned," indicating the work of "certain organizations or state."

The National Intelligence Service did not, however, single out North Korea by name as a suspect. Agency officials had told some members of the National Assembly yesterday that North Korea was the prime suspect, according to news reports in Seoul.

The intelligence agency had been expected to elaborate on that conclusion Thursday before the intelligence committee in the National Assembly. The committee did not convene, however, because the main opposition party vetoed the session, according to Park Ji-won, a member of the committee and a senior member of the opposition.

The attackers appeared to have backed off U.S.-based targets. Alex Lanstein, senior security researcher at FireEye, a Milpitas, Calif.-based computer security firm, said the attackers dropped the U.S. government and commercial Web sites from their hit list Tuesday afternoon, after those sites began working with large Internet service providers to filter and block the attack traffic.

Experts said the bug that caused the attacks, called MyDoom, is fairly unsophisticated. But they also noted that the bug was being frequently reprogrammed to target different sites.

The MyDoom bug first surfaced in January 2004 and was originally programmed to force all infected personal computers to attack the Web sites of SCO Group, a software company in Lindon, Utah, and Microsoft. Microsoft still has a standing reward offer of $250,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the bug's author. [Hardin/WashingtonPost/10July2009] 

Diplomats Still Struggling with Laptop Lapses. Nearly a decade after a State Department laptop containing highly classified information disappeared in an embarrassing security lapse, the agency is still unable to account for all of its portable computers, a government report said Wednesday.

The State Department's inspector general said Wednesday that a review of a sample of 334 laptops belonging to four departmental bureaus found that 27 were missing at the time of the audit and that 172, including nine of 14 classified laptops labeled "secret," were not protected with encryption software, potentially risking sensitive information.

"The department does not have an accurate accounting for and has not encrypted all of its classified and unclassified laptop computers in the Washington, D.C. area for the four bureaus included in (the inspector general's) audit," the report said.

There is no evidence to suggest that any sensitive information has been compromised and officials assured the auditors that the missing laptops, estimated to be worth $55,000, did not contain secrets, the report says.

But the computers and the contents of their hard drives could still be at risk, the inspector general's report said.

"Department officials could not provide ... documentation to support their assertions that the hard drives of the missing laptop computers did not contain (personally identifiable information) or classified information," it said.

"Because the content and the encryption status of the missing laptop computers are unknown, there is a risk that (personally identifiable information) and other sensitive department information may be susceptible to unauthorized access and use," the report said.

The inspector general's review was designed to see how the department has handled directives to boost the security of its laptop computers, including requirements to encrypt all information deemed sensitive on the devices. The report recommends that the department refocus attention on laptop security.

In 2000, disciplinary action was recommended against six State Department employees in connection with the disappearance of a classified computer from the department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. [WashingtonPost/8July2009]

Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE

Israel Has a Place of Honor for its Secret Soldiers. Near a multiplex cinema and a nondescript highway junction outside Tel Aviv is the place where Israel's secrets go when they get old.

The names and stories are carved into limestone walls and arranged in binders at a sleepy clump of buildings known by a misleadingly dull name - the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center. They offer a unique, if fragmentary, glimpse into the exploits of the Mossad agents and intelligence operatives who have waged this country's shadow wars.

Here, on a memorial wall, you can encounter names like Shalom Dani, a Holocaust survivor who became the Mossad's master forger. Dani honed his skills under cover in North Africa, taking part in the Mossad's effort to spirit thousands of Moroccan Jews to Israel before being dispatched to Argentina in 1960. There, he counterfeited the documents that allowed a team of agents to smuggle Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Nazi genocide, to his trial and eventual hanging in Israel.

Nearby, in a room dedicated to people who died of old age after long intelligence careers, there is a page in a binder describing Rachel Spinner, the Mossad's longtime cook. When Jordan's King Hussein came to hold top-secret meetings with Israeli leaders four decades ago, when the two countries were still officially at war, it was Spinner who made supper.

Once Israel's most closely guarded information, whatever appears here has aged and been deemed no longer worth keeping secret.

The centre was created as a memorial to the dead of Israel's intelligence community - the Mossad, which operates abroad, the Shin Bet, the internal security agency concerned largely with the Palestinians under Israeli military occupation, and military intelligence. The only official window into this murky world, the centre exists on the line between what is secret and what is not, its content carefully vetted by a committee before being approved for public consumption.

Often more is hidden than revealed: The shards of information here - the names of dead agents, the dates of their death, short biographies - seem to be only the tips of stories still submerged in secrecy.

Take one of the forgotten names carved into the wall of the centre's memorial to the fallen: Muhammad Kassem Sayed Ahmad. A Druse Arab agent, he was killed at a border crossing between Israel and Syria on the night of Nov. 28, 1956.

What he was doing there and how he died is still secret more than five decades later. Some of the people involved in the operation are still alive and details could endanger them.

Some ex-agents resent any details being published at all. Until the centre was established in the mid-1980s, the world of Israeli intelligence was a cipher even to Israelis: The name of the Mossad chief was classified, as was virtually everything else about the service and its sister agencies.

Today the Mossad chief's name and image are in the public domain - he's a bespectacled and bland-seeming man named Meir Dagan - and the agency has a website. So does the Shin Bet, which has even posted employee blogs.

It is possible to discern traces of displeasure with this turn of events, or at least of nostalgia for the cloaks and daggers of days past. "Society has changed, and today there's more pressure from what's known as 'the public's right to know,''' said Efraim Halevy, the former Mossad chief who heads the centre. "Once these things would have been considered treason.''

David Tzur, a retired brigadier general from military intelligence who is the centre's director, says he occasionally receives complaints. "There are old Shin Bet and Mossad guys who say we're going too far in what we release,'' he said.

The centre serves as something of a meeting place for grey-haired agents in from the cold. There are programs and lectures, a theatre that screens movies about intelligence success stories, and a monthly newsletter that covers developments in the intelligence world. An issue typically includes a few obituaries of elderly operatives, sometimes with a silhouette instead of a photograph, the biography always a bit vague on the details.

The centre grants a prize, the "Hero of Silence,'' to civilians, Israelis and foreigners, who have assisted Israel's intelligence services. Eight people have received the prize so far; the identities of seven are secret.

The eighth is Shulamit Kishak-Cohen, a colourful Beirut matron who ran a smuggling ring bringing Jews to Israel in the 1950s. Married off to a much older businessman as a teenager, Kishak-Cohen had a lengthy romantic liaison with a married French intelligence agent and used her connections with several disreputable characters, including a casino owner, to keep her network going. Eventually arrested in the early 1960s, she was released in a prisoner exchange after the 1967 Mideast War.

There are also spies whose existence is not even mentioned at the intelligence commemoration centre, people whom "we still can't put on the wall,'' says Tzur, the centre's director. Precisely how many is a secret. Instead, there is the following inscription:

"Dedicated to the memory of those from whom the fog cannot yet be lifted, and whose names cannot yet be revealed.'' [GuelphMurcury/9July2009] 

Apollo and America's Cold War. The Apollo Moon program was the classic Cold War political event, and as such overflowed with irony and unexpected consequences. It was an attempt by the United States and especially by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to win back the imaginative high ground that had been lost when Soviet Russia launched the first satellite in 1957 and then in 1961 the first man into orbit.

Sputnik was the USSR's greatest propaganda victory. It showed that even if their standard of living was lower than that of the West, that they could beat the US in the realm of technology. This hit the US in a soft spot. It was thanks to its technological lead that the US had been able to build the first nuclear weapons and to dominate the world's aviation and information systems industries. Before October 4, 1957 most Americans were certain that they would be the first nation to orbit a satellite and that they would lead the way into space.

At the time memories of the Korean War were fresh in everyone's minds. The Democrats were smarting from GOP accusations of having been "soft" on communism. Eisenhower was worried about the after effects of the 1950-1953 military build-up. His priority was to try and balance his desire to restrain the growth of government spending, with the need to maintain enough strength to contain Soviet Russia and Mao's China. He needed to know what the real military and economic strength of those powers was.

When he moved into the White House Ike had been appalled to find just how little hard intelligence the US had on the situation in Russia and China. At best the CIA could only give him a few educated guesses, and he distrusted military intelligence estimates due to his knowledge of the way budget politics were played and his experience of intelligence failures from Pearl Harbor and the Battle of the Bulge to the Berlin Blockade and the outbreak of the Korean War.

To remedy this he ordered the CIA and the Air Force to begin work on both the U-2 spy plane and on the WS-117L program, which evolved into the CORONA spy satellite program. From the president's point of view this was a logical, restrained program that answered a specific national need. He never imagined that space would emerge dramatically as a public political issue.

All of Ike's careful plans were destroyed when the Soviets launched Sputnik. The Democrats jumped on this unexpected political gift and used it to savage the President's policy of budgetary restraint. The USSR and Khrushchev were dumbfounded at the US response. America suddenly was presenting itself to the rest of the world as being technologically backward? The propaganda advantage was huge.

Eisenhower tried to calm down the American people, but his effort, in spite of being based on the self-evident fact that the US held an overwhelming advantage in every militarily significant technology with the exception of large rocket engines, failed. It was too good a theme for the Democrats to abandon and for the media it was a perfect story.

The image of old Ike wasting time on the golf course while the Soviets were busy building rockets was burned into the people's consciousness. The "Missile Gap" became the centerpiece of the 1960 campaign. JFK said, "We are facing a gap on which we are gambling our survival."

Kennedy promised vigor, he was going to get the country moving again after eight years of Republican lethargy in the White House. He also promised to do a better job fighting the Cold War than his predecessors. When it came to the space program he and his advisors were seriously conflicted. His science advisor, Jerome Wiesner, disliked human spaceflight. Like many scientists he thought of it as a waste of time. JFK's vice president, Lyndon Johnson, was an avid supporter: he saw it not just in terms of enhancing America's global prestige, but also as a continuation of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal infrastructure development programs.

The troubles and humiliations of Kennedy's first months in office pushed him to come down on Johnson's side of the argument. Nothing, he noted, would be as difficult or as impressive to the rest of mankind as "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." He was confident that the US could beat the Soviets to the Moon since his intelligence, provided by the CORONA satellites that were the offspring of Ike's WS-117L program, showed that in reality their rocket program was both limited and relatively primitive.

When JFK's defense secretary told the press that the Missile Gap was a delusion, this utterly humiliated Khrushchev and the Politburo. As a response they decided to ship almost all their medium and intermediate range nuclear missiles to Cuba, thus setting the stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. They also pushed for ever more spectacular space firsts. The first two-man crew, the first woman, the first Moon shot, and whatever else they could get Sergei Korolev to fit on top of his R-7 they launched. By the mid-1960s the propaganda effect wore thin.

Once the Apollo program gained momentum it also gained widespread and bipartisan political support. America was committed to beating the Soviet Union to the Moon. NASA put together what seemed at the time like a reasonable step-by-step approach that moved from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo. In fact there was considerable controversy within the agency over the best approach and, to this day, there are those who wish that the US had built a space station first and used it as a base for the lunar mission.

At the time of his assassination in November 1963 the Apollo Moon program was well-established as one of the administration's major achievements. JFK and LBJ were going to show the Republicans, and the rest of the world, that they could beat the Russians to the Moon. The shape of the US space industry with its overlapping commercial, scientific, military, and manned exploration sections was put in place and has not substantially changed over the last 46 years. [Dinerman/SpaceReview/8July2009] 

Black Spies' Civil War Efforts Highlighted in Portsmouth. When Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy during the Civil War, realized someone on his staff was leaking information to the Union, the last person he suspected was the nanny, Mary Elizabeth Bowser.

He thought she was just an illiterate slave, but she was actually a school teacher from Philadelphia.

The story of African American spies is one of the most overlooked chapters of the Civil War, Hari Jones, curator of the African American Civil War Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

"African American spies in the Civil War were critical to the Union effort," he said.

Often called the Legal League, or Lincoln's Loyal Legal League, a network of African American spies and saboteurs used deception and their own form of communication to undermine the Confederate effort and pass on information to the Union.

"These are very good soldiers, these are very good scouts, these are very good guides," Jones said.

Bowser was a prime example. She never told anyone she could read or write. When she was hired as Davis' nanny, she would eavesdrop on his conversations and glance at important papers on his desk.

She was the highest-placed spy in the Civil War. In 1995, she was inducted into the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame.

Among the other African American Civil War Spies:

- A group of unknown saboteurs who ignited a fire near two warehouses containing cotton and military uniforms that burned a giant section of Charleston, S.C. The fire caused $8 million in damage - the most devastating act of sabotage in American history, Jones said.

- Charlie Wright, a Virginia native who gave the exact position of Confederate troop movements leading up to the Battle of Gettysburg. Wright told Union troops to stage at Little Round Top, which was key to the Union's victory.

- John Scobell, a Mississippi man who entertained Confederate troops by singing and dancing. He would also venture into southern African-American communities and glean information about troop positions and movements.

"He danced his information all the way to the Union," Jones said. [Claffey/Fosters.com/7July2009] 

Section III - COMMENTARY

CIA Director Should Name Station Chiefs, by Haviland Smith. The ongoing turf battle between Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, and Leon Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has brought back unpleasant memories of the ill-conceived and poorly drawn Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, a legislative process that was started in the wake of 9/11.

It seems almost impossible that there could be a dispute going on over the authority of the DNI to appoint non-CIA officers as station chiefs abroad. It took until close to the end of the Cold War for the CIA to mature to the point where its station chiefs were no longer the product of OSS and the Second World War, but rather of the collective operational experience of the Cold War CIA. Only then did most stations come under the kind of operational management that brought hope for broader success.

And now the DNI wants to put neophytes in those jobs? That is simple insanity. Clandestine operations really do require as much experience as is available. Otherwise, surprises can be very embarrassing.

The simple process of drafting that 2004 law permitted all the knives to come out. It was time for all the angry and ambitious agencies that felt they had suffered or chafed under the overseas coordinating authority of the CIA and its station chiefs to go after increased (if not total) autonomy in their overseas operations. If they could not get autonomy, they wanted to wrest control from the CIA as it was reflected in the role of the station chief. Clearly, what you see today in the tiff between the DNI and the CIA director is a reflection or continuation of that tussle.

All the agencies involved - State, Defense, the FBI, the National Security Agency and others - wanted and presumably still want to be either on top of the overseas intelligence collection effort, or at least free from domination by any other organization. None of those agencies agreed with the concept, as spelled out in the original National Security Acts of 1947 and 1949, that the intelligence community abroad had to speak with one voice and that that voice should belong to the only organization that was involved purely in clandestine intelligence operations: the Central Intelligence Agency.

If you strip away all the politics and petty jealousies, the problem is that there are activities and responsibilities that are best carried out by the CIA, which has been running successful clandestine human intelligence-collection operations for 60 years. They may not be perfect, but they are the best we have.

The other part of that operational collection process is the conduct of liaison with foreign intelligence services. That liaison is critical in today's operations against terrorist organizations. Liaison services can and do operate highly effectively in environments where it is often extremely difficult for our officers to move unnoticed. Conducting liaison relationships requires the same level of experience and expertise that is demanded by collection operations.

These activities require the best, most experienced clandestine collection personnel in the U.S. government. To vest responsibility for those activities anywhere else at a time when intelligence collection is often a matter of survival is sheer folly. To give an operationally naive DNI that responsibility is irresponsible. It's just like the Cold War days, when most chiefs of station had been trained for World War II in the OSS. It didn't work well then and it won't work well now.

What the DNI can do perfectly effectively is run the intelligence community and the community's analytical processes. Let them be responsible for the production of Intelligence Estimates. That is an important job that, to an outside observer, appears recently to have been poorly done, particularly in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. What seems to have been missing is the ability or inclination to speak truth to power. To discharge that critical responsibility, the DNI will truly have to control the flow of analysis to the White House.

Of course, what is really needed here is a second look at the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. Because of the pressures generated by 9/11 and the prejudices that existed at the time, it was poorly designed from the start and contains anomalies that need to be corrected. Given the extraordinary lack of interest in Washington, that probably won't happen, but at very least the DNI needs to take himself and his growing number of troops out of the operational business. [About the Author: Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in East and West Europe and the Middle East, as chief of the counterterrorism staff and as executive assistant in the director's office.]  [Smith/BaltimoreSun/6July2009] 

Section IV - RESEARCH REQUESTS, OBITUARIES AND COMING EVENTS

Research Requests

Seeking Syllabi for Undergraduate Courses on Law Enforcement: I'm Col. Danny Dickerson, and have a request for the other members. I'm currently developing courses for a university. I need to know/contact any other member who has taught undergraduate courses on Homeland Security, Law Enforcement Intelligence, the Role of Law Enforcement in Homeland Security and Homeland Security and Intelligence. I would appreciate if they would provide me with a copy of their course(s) syllabus. For reasons of security, Please contact me directly at anshara@outdrs.net.

Seeking Former OSS members who served in Portugal or Portuguese Territories: Last October I've published a non-fiction book on intelligence in Portugal during WW2 (The secret diary Salazar did not read - O diario Secreto que Salazar nao leu - 215 pages - ISBN 9789895553433). British historian Nigel West wrote the foreword. I spent 19 months compiling data in various national archives around the globe. This specific book is based in Liddell's diary (MI5) on Portugal (+ Portuguese nationals). I am doing the research for another non-fiction book on OSS in Portugal and Portuguese Territories - including Mozambique, Cape Verde and Portuguese Guinea. I would appreciate to get in touch with former OSS officers who have worked in Portugal/Portuguese Territories (or with their families).
Thank you very much for your time and consideration, I thank any AFIO members who can assist with this, Rui Araujo Phone: +351-919403622 Mobile (Lisbon, Portugal)
E-mail: rmda14@gmail.com
POST SCRIPTUM- If necessary please feel free to check my biography here: http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/icij/ Please go to section: "ICIJ JOURNALISTS - you'll find my name in the list.

Daughter Searching for Father - Chon Quan Nguyen - It is my hope that you can help me locate my father, Chon Quan Nguyen. I have been given very limited information about him through my mother. They split up in Saigon when I was only 2 yrs old. My mom later married an American US Army soldier and we moved to the US in 1973.
My mom and adopted American father divorced in 1981 and my birth father, Chon Quan Nguyen, found us in the US and wrote a letter to my mom asking to see me. However, with the recent divorce between my mom and adoptive American father, we were headed to visit him in DC. I don't know what was told to my birth father in the response letter but that was the last time we have heard from him.
Here is the limited information I was given recently from my mother.
NGUYEN QUAN CHON
- Born 1940 in Quan Tri.
- He lived on Bui Chi Street, Saigon, VN.
- He had a younger brother that went by the name of Paul. I have memories of him visiting us in our Saigon apt., and thought he was my father. I do not know if Paul ever made it out of Saigon.
- In 1981, Chon Q Nguyen wrote my mom from Richmond, VA, stating he was moving to TX, and wanted to see me.
I have one photo of him when he was younger. When I google searched CHON Q NGUYEN, this name came up on the AFIO website.Thank you to any member who can assist me with this.
REPLIES to Thao Phuong Parkinson Deckard at htth915@yahoo.com

Obituaries

Count Adrian de Suiza, Author, Diplomat, Spy. Count Adrian de Suiza, an author and historian who was a member of the Spanish royal family, died 11 July 2009. He was 84.

His wife, Countess Trudy de Suiza, said she came home to their condo in the Waterview Tower on Flagler Drive around 5 p.m., to find that he had died.

Count de Suiza was raised in France, where the family fled to escape the Spanish Civil War. In 1940, when he was barely 16, he joined the British army. After World War II, he and his family returned to Spain.

In the 1960s and '70s, Spanish dictator Gen. Francisco Franco dispatched him to Paris, where he served as a diplomat and a spy. His friends included prime ministers, ambassadors and heads of multinational corporations.

He married the countess in 1992 and moved to West Palm Beach soon after. More recently, he published a book about Spain's Queen Isabella called Isabella: Power, Glory and Dust. In recent years, he lectured on Spanish history to rapt Palm Beach audiences.

"He was a very, very special human being," his wife said. [Chapman/PalmBeachPost/11July2009] 

Philip Glaessner, 89: After WWII, Economist Devoted Life To Promoting Human Liberty, Choice. Philip Glaessner, a World Bank economist whose language skills helped keep fellow prisoners of war informed during World War II, died of congestive heart failure June 23 at his home in Evanston, Ill. He was six days short of his 90th birthday.

Mr. Glaessner survived two internments during World War II, the first when the British rounded up 28,000 "enemy" nationals, including Jewish refugees like Mr. Glaessner, and later in a German prisoner-of-war camp known as Stalag IX-B or Bad Orb, when he was a U.S. Army intelligence officer. In the 2003 PBS documentary "Berga: Soldiers of Another War," he said his fluency in German from his Austrian boyhood allowed him to translate the radio broadcasts beamed into camp for the guards.

He then talked to French prisoners, who were sent out to work in the fields, where they could get newspapers and other sources of information. Some Canadians smuggled in a radio set and secretly listened to the BBC, and Mr. Glaessner said he put all the information together.

"And at night I used to go around to all the American barracks and make these - gave them information on how the war was coming and where the German troops were and where the American troops were and when we could expect to be liberated. And I thought that was terribly important, because you know when you are in this situation you basically survive on hate, love and hope. Those are the three things. If you give up you die."

Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, on June 29, 1919, Philip Jacob Glaessner was the Jewish son of a physician and a musician. He escaped the Nazi invasion of Austria when he was sent away to boarding school in England in 1935. A few years later, just before he sat for his final exams at Cambridge University, where he studied under John Maynard Keynes, he found himself imprisoned by the British.

With 28,000 other men and women of "enemy" nationality, Mr. Glaessner was held outside of London, then on the Isle of Man and eventually sent to Canada aboard a cargo ship. Denied entry to the United States, he was able to move to Cuba a year later. In 1942, he immigrated to the United States, where he was reunited with his parents and two sisters, who had escaped Austria to New York.

He renewed his study of economics at Columbia University, but three months later was drafted into the U.S. Army. As a native German speaker, he was sent to Camp Ritchie, Md., for intelligence training. Shortly after D-Day, Mr. Glaessner landed in Normandy. During the Battle of the Bulge late that year, he was captured by the Germans but hid his Jewish origins.

"They broke through. And I remember, I was in the cellar together with some civilians and some other GIs and they came down. We threw up our hands, and said basically: "Kamerad nicht schiessen!" I mean, what could you do?" he told filmmakers for the 2004 documentary "The Ritchie Boys." "I had destroyed all my identification, because, imagine if they had realized who I was."

American soldiers who were discovered as Jews were sent to Berga am Elster, a slave labor camp where, within three months, 20 percent died of malnutrition, disease and physical abuse.

When the prisoners were liberated in spring 1945, Mr. Glaessner said the Allied soldiers cheered as they were driven through bombed-out German towns. "We hated them so. Why did we hate them? Because of the way we had been treated and so on. And looking back on it, I've often been ashamed of this in a way. But somehow this was the reaction or just my reaction, but we were 1300 non-commissioned American officers cheering as we drove through this devastated city."

Upon his return to the United States, he graduated from Columbia University, where he also received a master's degree in economics in 1946, studying under Arthur F. Burns, who later became chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank. Economics had attracted Mr. Glaessner after he saw hungry men waiting in bread lines in Vienna in the 1920s, and he devoted much of the rest of his life to developing economic policies that would promote human freedom and choice.

He worked for the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and went to Chile and Brazil. He became assistant director for the Alliance for Progress and the Inter-American Development Bank during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. His last position before his 1984 retirement was at the World Bank, where he was a deputy director of Latin American finance and industrial lending. He also was a director of a department that financed key tourism projects around the world. In retirement, he provided technical assistance to foreign finance ministries to help them computerize and modernize their fiscal operations. He also volunteered in the 1980s and 1990s for the counseling service of the District housing board's counseling service.

After 44 years in Bethesda, he moved to Evanston, Ill., in 2007.

Survivors include his wife of 56 years, Elisabeth Schnabel Glaessner of Evanston; four children, Thomas Glaessner and Philip Glaessner, both of Bethesda, Barbara Glaessner Novak of Evanston and Tina Glaessner of Orleans, Calif.; and 10 grandchildren. [Sullivan/WashingtonPost/7July2009] 

Peter Lake, Winner of an MC and the Croix de Guerre While Serving with Special Operations Executive in Enemy-Occupied France. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Lake was working for a merchant bank in West Africa. He was called up in October 1940, and served with the Intelligence Corps for a short time before being recruited by the SOE. Posing as a shipping agent on the island of Fernando Po, in the Gulf of Guinea, he carried out disruptive actions against German interests.

In mid-1943, he returned to England, and after a refresher course in parachuting, small arms and explosives, was transferred to SOE's "F" Section. On April 9 1944, accompanied by Ralph Beauclerk, a radio operator, he was dropped into the Dordogne valley. The pair had been presented with silver cigarette cases, briefed by Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, and seen off by his assistant, the formidable Vera Atkins.

Lake, field name "Jean Pierre", was given the job of helping Captain Jacques Poirier, a Frenchman with a British commission, start a new circuit - "Digger" - after "Author" had been blown. On landing, he narrowly missed a farmhouse roof and was met by Poirier, pistol in hand, who challenged him, partly in jest, to identify himself.

Poirier later recalled that Lake was short, rather stiff in manner and a stickler for the rules but, over the following months, he found that he was completely reliable, courageous and full of humor. Andr� Malraux, the French author and statesman, called the trio les farfelus, or the madcaps.

Peter Ivan Lake, the son of the acting consul in Majorca, was born on January 30 1915 at Limpsfield, Surrey. He was educated at Clifton before going up to St John's College, Oxford, where he read Modern Languages.

The main tasks of his mission in France were to organise supply drops, gauge the potential of the Resistance units, estimate their arms requirements and their ability, given proper support, to make good use of them. This involved covering wide stretches of the Corr�ze, Lot and Dordogne, using small roads.

Lake knew that his cover would not hold up under expert interrogation. He carried his identity papers in one pocket and a revolver in the other. If he was cornered, he decided that he would have to try to shoot his way out.

On one occasion, he was bicycling towards Brive-la-Gaillarde with radio messages in a bag concealed beneath some vegetables when he came across a German patrol. His French was good enough to fool them, but not the Vichy milice accompanying them.

In the course of producing his identity papers and chatting to the Germans, he dropped his bicycle and the vegetables tumbled out. The miliciens busied themselves with picking them up and omitted to question him.

Lake instructed the maquis in the use of arms and explosives. Some of them, being Republican veterans of the Spanish Civil War, thought they had nothing to learn, and said as much among themselves in their native Catalan. Lake, because of his boyhood, spoke the language and reproved them for their carelessness in openly using their own tongue.

Then, questioning their vaunted knowledge of explosives, he snapped open his cigarette lighter, picked up a slab of plastic explosive, and put it to the flame. The maquisards ducked smartly out of the way, and were somewhat mortified when he stood his ground. Lake then added a fuse and a detonator and threw it into a pond; there was a large explosion.

In the nearby village of Siorac-en-P�rigord, where they sought storage, lived two pro-Vichy families. Worried about the danger that this posed, Lake recruited a local "heavy," the commander of a maquis unit, known only to the group as "Soleil." A man of villainous aspect, he made a late-night visit, shone his torch in the faces of the heads of the families and warned them that if the Gestapo arrested any of his friends he would return and kill them.

Lake took part in sabotage operations and in raids on the enemy. In one attack on a dam, the Germans had been tipped off and were waiting for him. As Lake and his men crawled through thickly- wooded country towards their target, a maquisard arrived to ask for some tips on the use of a bazooka. At that moment, powerful searchlights caught them in their glare and the Germans opened up with machine guns. Lake and Poirier dived into the undergrowth and managed to get away.

As D-Day approached, Lake made his headquarters at a chateau at Limeuil. The maquis, adept at guerrilla warfare, were operating over large tracts of the countryside and inflicting heavy losses on the Germans, who no longer dared venture outside the towns except in strength.

On June 4 Beauclerk reported that the BBC had broadcast the long-awaited message that the invasion was imminent: "The giraffe has a long neck". Poirier spoke later of an unforgettable headlong drive through the night to alert the maquis detachments.

It was the precursor of a series of major operations to sabotage the German lines of communication. Lake and three comrades blew up two sections of the track ahead of an armored train carrying a German division northwards to threaten the Allied bridgehead in Normandy. The Germans mounted punitive expeditions, some savage in scope.

On June 23 a village postmistress, one of a network whose job it was to telephone if they spotted any suspicious activity, called to say that panzers were heading for the chateau. They were already at the gate when Lake and his comrades made a run for it. Pursued by machine gunfire, they reached the river where they were helped across by a fisherman in a dinghy.

On August 15 Lake played a notable part in negotiating the surrender of the German garrison of Brive-la-Gaillarde, A British uniform for him was dropped by parachute for the occasion. The grip of the maquis on the region had grown ever tighter and it was the first city in occupied France to be liberated solely by the Resistance. Freedom prompted an explosion of popular joy and the foursome led by Lake entered the city standing in the back of an open car to great acclaim.

Others were not so welcoming. Passing through Marennes, General de Gaulle, having been introduced to Lake, told him that, as an Englishman, he had no business being there. "Go away!" de Gaulle said, and turned his back on him.

Lake was deeply wounded by the snub, but, some years later, when he was consul in Brazil, the French ambassador there invited him to a reception in Rio de Janeiro in honour of the General. This time, de Gaulle greeted Lake in a charming manner and the earlier slight was forgiven.

At the end of his mission in France, Lake moved to the Italian section of SOE. After the war, he joined the Foreign Office and served as consul in, among other postings, Mozambique, France, Iceland, Syria, Indonesia, Italy, Belgium and Brazil.

After retiring in 1975, he worked for the Cambridge Wildlife Trust. His great interest was bookbinding and he was a skilled practitioner. He was a Chevalier de la L�gion d'Honneur.

Peter Lake died on June 26, 2009. He married, in 1944, Kathleen (Kay) Sheffield. She survives him with their son and daughter. [Telegraph/12July2009] 

COMING EVENTS

EVENTS IN COMING TWO MONTHS....

Thursday, 16 July 2009, 11:30 - Colorado Springs, CO - The Rocky Mountain Chapter of AFIO to hear expert on "CIA Tibetan Training in Colorado in the 1950s"
Susie Stepanek, Of the Pike's Peak Library Special Research Department, will speak on CIA Tibetan Training in Colorado in the 1950s. Event takes place at the Air Force Academy Falcon Club.
Please RSVP to Tom Van Wormer at 719-481-8273 or robsmom@pcisys.net

16 July 2009 - Boston, MA - CIRA New England Chapter hosts luncheon meeting. The New England Chapter of the Central Intelligence Retirees Association [CIRA] will feature a Pinkerton CI Operations director. Event will be at Hampshire House. For more info contact Dick Gay, VP CIRA/NE, 207-374-2169

20 - 24 July 2009 - Alexandria, VA - Espionage Investigations and Interviewing Techniques - Course 518
This course is designed to provide an introduction to the complexities of and the decision making processes associated with investigating and prosecuting espionage cases in the United States in the 21st Century. The course examines the psychology of espionage and the basis for opening espionage investigations. It explains the evolution of key legal and policy decisions associated with prosecuting espionage cases. The course provides tools for conducting successful counterintelligence interviews. These tools include a self assessment of the interviewer's behavioral skills; counterintelligence interviewing techniques; detecting deception during interviews; questioning techniques; and practical exercises in interviewing espionage suspects. This course provides espionage investigators in the US national security community a deeper understanding of the status of counterespionage today, and their individual roles in the protection of our nation's most vital secrets, plans, and programs. (5 days)

AGENDA Monday, 20 July 2009, 8:00a-4:00p - Alexandria, VA - Day 1 of 5 - at the CI Centre, Professor Connie Allen- Seminar Introduction and Objectives; The Psychology of Espionage; Anatomy of Espionage; Anatomy of a Sting

Tuesday, 21 July 2009, 8:00a-4:00p - Alexandria, VA - Day 2 of 5 - CI Centre Professors John Martin and Connie Allen - Legal Issues: Understanding past espionage cases which established case law for espionage violations and how these individuals have been exposed; Corroboration: Kampiles; Agent of a foreign power: 1941 case; How long can you talk with a suspect: Pelton; The John Walker case and others; Failures and mistakes encountered during espionage investigations: Cook, Smith, and Koecher cases

Wednesday, 22 July 2009, 8:00a-11:00a - Alexandria, VA - Day 3 of 5 - CI Centre Professor Tawfik Hamid Interviewing an Islamist Terrorist/Extremist Who Belongs to a Jihadist Group or Al-Qaeda Style Organization; - 11:00a-4:00p CI Centre Professor Sue Adams: Counterintelligence Interviewing Techniques; Self Assessment for Interviewers - DISC Behavioral Styles; DISC Behavioral Styles and CI Interviewing Techniques: Rapport Building Skills

Thursday, 23 July 2009, 8:00a-4:00p - Alexandria, VA - Day 4 of 5 - CI Centre Professor Sue Adams - Detecting Deception During Interviews: Nonverbal Clues to Deception, Verbal Clues to Deception; Deception and Questioning Techniques

Friday, 24 July 2009, 8:00a-4:00p - Alexandria, VA - Day 5 of 5 - CI Centre Professor Sue Adams - 8:00a-4:00p Interviewing Suspects: Theme Development for Espionage Suspects; Interview Plans: Interviewing Suspects; Practical Exercises

TO REGISTER FOR THIS SPECIAL COURSE: A client has allowed us to open up available seats to individuals who hold a current SECRET clearance to attend their running of this course the week of 20-24 July 2009 at the CI Centre in Alexandria, VA. The cost of this five-day course for government attendees is $2,618.70 per person; for corporate attendees is $3,045 per person. To register, fill out this form, or contact Adam Hahn at 703-642-7454.

Sunday, 26 July 2009, 10 am - 5 pm - Beachwood, OH - The AFIO Northern Ohio Chapter, in conjunction with the Maltz Museum of Beachwood Ohio are hosting a special brunch, speaker - Gene Poteat - and exhibit. Topic: Industrial Espionage. Gene Poteat, our AFIO National President, is coming to Cleveland from AFIO Hqtrs to speak at our Sunday Brunch. Gene’s talk will be a part of a special brunch event at the MALTZ MUSEUM in Beachwood. Because of this, we WILL BEGIN EARLIER THAN USUAL, at 10:00 a.m.
10:00 – 11:00 - Brunch, catered by Appetite, with informal talk by Gene Poteat adding some perspectives about the noon exhibit on Japanese Internments in WWII.
11:00 – Noon, Tour Exhibit: “The Enemy Within: Terror in America --1776 to Today” - Traveling exhibit of the International Spy Museum
Noon – 1:00 - Presentation: Maltz Museum Auditorium - S. Gene Poteat , National President, Association of Former Intelligence Officers, on INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE
1:00 – 5:00 - Visit Maltz Museum’s Resident Exhibits
COST:$20.00 per person, payable by check in advance
Location: Maltz Museum, 2929 Richmond Rd., Beachwood, OH 44122
Mail check marked “Brunch” to Dianne Mueller
RSVP: Email or phone to Dianne Mueller to dmueller@msglpa.com

28 July 2009, noon onwards - Washington, D.C. - The July Defense Intelligence Forum will be sponsored jointly by DIAA and DACOR. It will meet at DACOR Bacon House, 1801 F Street, NW. Registration will begin and cash bar will open at 1200. Lunch will be at 1230. The program will start at about 1245. DACOR is an easy walk from Farragut West and Farragut North Metro stations. Several parking garages are nearby. The speaker will be LTG Patrick M. Hughes (USA, Ret), who will speak on the dilemma and dynamics of growing global instability. General Hughes is on the DIAA board of directors and is a DACOR member. A former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, he retired after 35 years of Army service. He returned to government in 2005 as Assistant Secretary for Information Analysis (Chief of Intelligence) at the Department of Homeland Security. He is now Corporate Vice President for Intelligence and Counterterrorism at L-3 Communications.
DACOR members will make reservations directly with DACOR. All others send by 20 July a check for $25 per person to DIAA, 256 Morris Creek Road, Cullen, Virginia 23934. Give the name, association (AFIO, DIAA, FAOA, NMIA, etc.), email address, and telephone number for each person. Registration will begin and cash bar will open at 1200.  Lunch will be at 1230.  The program will start at about 1245. DACOR cash bar prices:  Soft drinks $1, beer and wine $2, and spirits $3

Wednesday, 29 July 2009; 6:30 pm - More Sex(pionage) - Continued Tales of Spies, Lies, and Naked Thighs [at Spy Museum] "God gave me both a brain and a body, and I shall use them both…”—Rose O’Neal Greenhow, Confederate Spy
It’s one of the oldest tricks of the trade: sexpionage. From ancient intrigues to current schemes, spies, counterspies, and terrorists may conduct their undercover activities under the covers! International Spy Museum Board Member and author H. Keith Melton will reveal how seduction is used as a tool to attract and manipulate assets, to coerce and compromise targets, and to control spies in both reality and fiction. Featuring authentic KGB sexual entrapment videos and newly-released technical details of the infamous Russian “honey traps,” Melton will tell all about the spies who stop at nothing to get their man—or woman! For your further titillation, the country’s leading intelligence bibliographer, whose name we cannot disclose, will review the literature of “sex and espionage” with recommendations for further reading. 18 and older only. Where: International Spy Museum, 800 F St NW, Washington, DC, Gallery Place/Chinatown Metrorail Station
Tickets: $20; Advance Registration required. Tickets are non-refundable and do not include admission to the International Spy Museum. To register: https://web.spymuseum.org/e-commerce/ItemList.aspx

Thursday 30 July 2009, Noon - 1 p.m. - Washington, DC - SPY MASTER: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West [at the Spy Museum] He was one of the youngest generals in the history of the KGB, and his intelligence career spanned the better part of the Cold War. As deputy resident at the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC, he oversaw Moscow’s spy network in the United States, and as head of KGB foreign counter-intelligence, he directed several Soviet covert actions against the West. In his memoirs, Spymaster, KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin (Ret.) provides an unparalleled look at the inner workings of Moscow’s famed spy agency. Join Kalugin to hear firsthand how he became disillusioned with the Soviet system, fell out with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and what he thinks of recent intelligence riddles from Moscow, including the death of Russian intelligence defector Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. Join the author for an informal chat and book signing. Where: International Spy Museum, 800 F St NW, Washington, DC, Gallery Place/Chinatown Metrorail Station TICKETS: FREE. No registration required.

1 August 2009 - Viera (Melbourne), FL - The AFIO Florida Satellite Chapter luncheon will feature Captain Richard P. Jeffrey USN Retired, Pearl Harbor survivor. Captain Jeffrey’s account of the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 was video-taped by the U.S. National Park Service and is now an Oral History in the archives of the USS Arizona Memorial in the harbor at Pearl where it may be viewed by visitors. Captain Jeffery is a U.S. Navy Academy Class of 1939 graduate. He is a survivor of the 7 December 1941, Pearl Harbor attack, having been an Ensign aboard the Battleship USS Maryland. Later he served on General Eisenhower’s Headquarters Supreme Commander Allied Forces staff in Europe.
The luncheon takes place at the Indian River Colony Club. For further information or reservations contact George Stephenson, Chapter President gstephenson@cfl.rr.com (321 267-6292) or Donna Czarnecki DonnaCZ12@AOL.com Chapter Treasurer.

NEW DAY - Monday, 10 August 2009, 6:30 p.m. - Washington, DC - How To Break A Terrorist [at the Spy Museum]. “Respect, rapport, hope, cunning, and deception are our tools."—Matthew Alexander
Interrogation is the ultimate battle of wills. The most expert interrogators have an arsenal of tactics at-the-ready. Gauging their target, they must quickly assess which psychological strategies will work to gain the most reliable results. Air Force officer Matthew Alexander is part of a small group of military interrogators who went to Iraq in 2006 trained to get information without using harsh methods. He sat face-to-face with hardened members of Al Qaeda and convinced them to talk. Alexander, author of How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq, will describe the true story of the critical interrogation he conducted that led to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Alexander will share his riveting experiences and reveal what it takes to be a great interrogator.
Where: International Spy Museum, 800 F St NW, Washington, DC, Gallery Place/Chinatown Metrorail Station
TICKETS: $12.50; Advance Registration required. Tickets are non-refundable and do not include admission to the International Spy Museum.
To register: https://web.spymuseum.org/e-commerce/ItemList.aspx

Thursday, 20 August 2009, Noon - 1 p.m. - Washington, DC - The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America [at the Spy Museum] In 1993, former KGB officer Alexander Vassiliev was permitted unique access to Stalin-era records of Soviet intelligence operations against the United States. The notes Vassiliev took and subsequently made available to Library of Congress historian John Earl Haynes and professor Harvey Klehr, offer unprecedented insight into Soviet espionage in America. Based on this unique historical source, Harvey and Klehr have constructed a shocking, new account of Moscow’s espionage in America. The authors will expose Soviet spy tactics and techniques and shed new light on a number of controversial issues, including Alger Hiss’s cooperation with Soviet intelligence, journalist I.F. Stone’s recruitment and work for the KGB, and Ernest Hemingway’s meeting with KGB agents. Join the author for an informal chat and book signing.
Where: International Spy Museum, 800 F St NW, Washington, DC, Gallery Place/Chinatown Metrorail Station
TICKETS: FREE. No registration required.

17 September 2009 – San Francisco, CA – The AFIO Jim Quesada Chapter hosts R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence and member of AFIO's Honorary Board. R. James Woolsey speaks on: Spies, Energy and the New World of the 21st Century: The relatively comfortable world of having a stolid bureaucratic energy and a secure national infrastructure has been replaced by something far more difficult to deal with. As we make decisions about what direction our society should take regarding energy, keeping in mind that we need for it to be increasingly clean, secure, and affordable, what threats and problems should be at the center of our concerns, and what are some of the approaches that can help us deal with all three needs? United Irish Cultural Center 2700 45th Avenue, SF. 11:30 AM no host cocktails; noon - luncheon. $25 member rate with advance reservation and payment; $35 non-member rate. RSVP/pre-payment is required. E-m ail RSVP to Mariko Kawaguchi (please indicate meat or fish) afiosf@aol.com and mail check made out to "AFIO" to: Mariko Kawaguchi, P.O. Box 117578 Burlingame, CA 94011.

13-16 October 2009 - Las Vegas, NV - AFIO National Symposium - Nellis AFB, Creech AFB. Details and registration forthcoming.

AFIO 2009 Fall Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada
13 October to 16 October, 2009
Cold Warriors in the Desert: From Atomic Blasts to Sonic Booms

Symposium will feature presentations on the testing of atomic weapons, airborne reconnaissance platforms, and more. Onsite visits to Nellis Air Force Base - Home of the Fighter Pilot, the U.S. Department of Energy's Nevada Test Site - the former on-continent nuclear weapons proving ground, and Creech Air Force Base - the home of the Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (currently deployed for combat missions in the Middle East, yet piloted from Creech).

Preliminary Agenda HERE for scheduling of your travel

Registration forthcoming

Harrah's Hotel Registration is available now at: Telephone reservations may be made at 800-901-5188. Refer to Group Code SHAIO9 to get the special AFIO rate.

To make hotel reservations online,
go to: http://tinyurl.com/lsx23o
Special AFIO October Symposium Las Vegas rates are available up to Friday, September 11, 2009

For Additional Events two+ months or greater....view our online Calendar of Events

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